No Privacy
by Atomic Wombat
Summary: Yuuko exacts a heavy toll on Doumeki. Can he save Watanuki? Please rate! Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to xxxHolic. I am merely a fan. Shonen-ai content, not too explicit.
1. Chapter 1

Some people think that I'm naturally standoffish. Especially with Watanuki. Mistaking shyness for rude disregard is just stupid. Watanuki certainly hasn't gotten it yet. But Himawari-chan knows how much I care, I think. Not that we've spoken of my feelings for Watanuki directly, but I think that she tries to clue him in every now and then by mentioning how well we get along or how we're such good friends.

I have proven my love for him countless times. I've saved his scrawny behind more often than even he knows. The most recent of which cost me a lot in the way of blood loss. I count the loss to Yuuko as minor if it keeps Watanuki the way he should be: whole, alive, perfect. I just wish I knew what to do about it. Maybe today at lunch I'll finally get to say something.

"Watanuki, your looks make it hard for me to concentrate during archery competitions." No that sounds like I'm mad at him. I always come out sounding like that don't I? Hmm.

"Watanuki, stop shouting or I will kiss you so that you shut up."

Too forward.

"Watanuki, I want more ootooro." is what I said instead.

I'm such a loser.

After much shouting in my direction, I had to unplug my fingers from my ears just so that I could hear the class bell ring. I spent the next two classes doodling in the margins of my notes. Mostly shapes. I like triangles a lot. They kind of remind me of his elbows when he gets worked up about something. Since he's usually worked up about something, I see them quite often.

At the end of classes, I had archery practice. Himawari walked with Watanuki on the way to his part-time job at the shop. Even though she doesn't mean it, sometimes I become irrational when it comes to how he looks at her. It irks me that he gets so excited when he sees her and has that goofy grin on his face. I mean he practically leaps when he sees her. Sheesh. It's not my place to step in, so all I can do is watch them leave together as I head in the opposite direction. Not once does he look back and see me watching him. Not once.

As I have a big competition coming up, practice took longer than usual. I was still lost in thought rehearsing all the things I should have said but that even now I couldn't form into coherent sentences. It surprised me when I saw that black dumpling on legs with the big ears, Mokona, lounging on the steps of the family temple. It looks like he/she/it? had been there quite a while judging from the number of empty sake bottles lying all over the wooden floor.

"Where's Yuuko?" I asked Mokona.

"Inside!" squeaked the annoying high voice. I understand that this creation is useful to Yuuko and that she enjoys its company, but I'd think as many times as she has a hangover that she would have designed it with a less bothersome voice. Oh well, not my design, not my problem.

As I enter, it seems that Yuuko has staged one of her "appearances". She's always dressed in poor taste, often like a traditional prostitute with her obi on backwards. Oh she's got great legs and I suppose nice breasts, but I'm not into that sort of thing. I like them more ... well, just more not her. I don't know why she arranges herself like this for me. She knows that I have no interest in her of any sort of personal nature.

She leans up from her reclined position on the low bench inside my room. I'm so glad she forgot to bring her pipe with her. I don't like the smell of smoke and it would take me a long time to clean the furnishings to remove all of the odor. "The harbinger of bad luck has struck again." she says as she smiles at me with a wink.

I wait.

After a pause, "He needs you. You must decide if he shall have part of you or how much that should be."

"Where." Is all I say. It's not a question; it ends up being a quiet demand.

"The swings at the park." she says. "Sit on the one on the left."

I turn on my heel and leave. Mokona hiccups a bleary phrase that sounds something like a mixture of "goodbye" and "good luck" as I pass. While I walk to the park, I focus on Watanuki. I know that it does me absolutely no good to try to discern Yuuko's meaning. It never makes sense until everything's over anyway so there's really no point. I wonder what it will cost me to help Watanuki. I don't mind paying it, as long as it keeps him safe, but I still wonder.

When I reach the park, I move directly to the left-hand swing and sit. Nothing happens. I swing my legs. Nothing happens. As I'm scratching my head and wondering what to try next, my knees fold a bit and I start to swing forward. There is a blur of something in front of me about 5 feet away. I kick off and start swinging in earnest. It's really hard to do since these swings were built for three-and-a-half foot tall children. I have to fold me knees at awkward angles just to get going. I bet Yuuko is laughing her nonexistent ass off if she's watching this.

As I swing forward again, faster now, the shape finally resolves itself into a black triangle sticking up out of the play sand. I like triangles, because they remind me of

oh

Gods

no!

I leap off the swing at its highest point and land beside the triangle of black cloth. Frantically digging, I start screaming in my head. Just his name over and over and over again. I don't waste the breath on yelling it out loud, nor do I waste it in crying. That will just slow down my excavation.

Finally his limp form is above the surface. I begin to breathe for him and pump his chest as they showed me how to do in school. Watanuki coughs up great gobs of sand and opens his bleary eyes just a slit.

"Dou-me... 愛" he says in an addled voice and closes his eyes and then, frighteningly, his heart stops.

No! Damn it! No! Tears streaming from my eyes, I look up and see Yuuko standing quietly at our sides. She has a grave look on her face and she lightly touches my hair. "Do you want to save him? It will cost you dearly." she says in a subdued voice.

I nod and say "Anything that I have to give - anything that I am - you can have for him." I know that wishes are not bought cheaply from Yuuko.

She grins brightly and says that it is done. I look down at Watanuki in relief and sigh deeply as I see him breathing again. As I look up to find out what price I had paid, I see that Yuuko has gone. I suppose that means that I will find out what I've given soon.

"Stupid, Doumeki" I hear.

I sigh again, although this time it was from exasperation and I whip my head around to look down at Watanuki in my arms. But he's still sleeping.

But I heard him say my name as clearly as I could hear the breeze moving through the trees of the park. Maybe I just imagined it. Just then, Watanuki opens his eyes and they focus immediately on my face. He begins to flail about yelling "Why are you holding me ... and not doing anything else with me?"

All my excellent range of responses were shattered with that last bit. "What?" was my witty reply.

"You heard me, stupid!" he shouted. "Why are you holding me ... and not touching me the way I want?"

I can't make out what he's saying. It sounds like my fantasies are coming true, but there's no way that he feels...

"What fantasies?!?" he asks.

Oh no, did I just say that out loud? Maybe I'm really becoming crazy. I mean I've been focusing on kissing him or talking to him or I don't know what, that I must have snapped all controls I have.

"Kissing him?" Wantanuki says. "Kissing who?"

Okay that's it. This must be total delusion because now I think that he can hear me. That he can

That he will

know. Oh no.

At the moment, I just thought "oh no" a handkerchief falls into my hand from out of nowhere. Embroidered in the corner are four tiny little words.

I took your privacy.

ohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohno

"Ummmm, Kimihiro?" I mumble.

It seems he's distracted by a bead of sweat rolling down my neck that is a leftover from my digging activities or a new one from my recent discovery. I know he's distracted because a, he's staring at it and b, he's thinking so loudly about it that it's like he's shouting.

"Hrmpf" he clears his throat. "Buy time, buy time" he thinks. "Yes?" he says aloud.

"I think now is the time that you know something." I say. And I open up my mental images of all the things I should have said to him, that I should have done for him or, more to the point, to him.

He gasps. But his mind is so confused that I can't figure out what he's feeling about what I showed him.

I turn to leave without another word. I hear the hard sound of shoes on pavement behind me and suddenly I can't breathe. It's not because of the hard grip that Kimihiro has around my waist. It's not because his bony chin is digging into my back as he hugs me. It's because I can hear him thinking about what's coming next.

He silently pleads for me to turn around and I do it. He stretches on his toes and I feel my skin ripple in reaction as a cool, soft tongue traces the falling bead of sweat and tries to capture it. Reflexively I tilt my head back to give him better access.

This feels so amazing. I'm going to catalog this so that I can remember exactly how it feels after Watanuki wakes up and gets his senses in order. So besides the amazing part, I'm holding my reactions in check as much as possible so that I can guard myself against the coming pain.

Suddenly, Watanuki starts giggling and holding his sides. "Protect yourself?" He says between gasps. "Why would you protect yourself?" He suddenly opens to me, lets me see everything.

He no longer has any reserve. No longer.

I wind my fingers into his short hair and pull him toward me. I don't have the patience to be truly gentle but I'll try to not make it as rough as my urgency is begging me to be. He closes his eyes and I touch my lips to his. I'm trying to be good. I'm trying to be controlled. And I can't. I feel him pressing into my mouth, pressing my teeth hard against my lips. I open my mouth and force him to allow my tongue to enter his.

Now that I've gained entry I can slow down and explore. "Hold still" I breathe in my mind. And he does with a curious thought. I use my tongue like a finger. I trace the inside of his upper lip, the back side of his lower teeth and underneath his tongue. As I begin to mold my mouth around his so that I can probe deeper, the breath he had been holding explodes. He begins to make little begging noises and almost-whines in the back of his throat. Finally, he latches onto my tongue and draws it deeper and deeper into his throat. He's holding my head and using the very firm suction to hold my tongue so deep that it's bordering on painful.

I finally have to pull back, just to breathe. I'd lost all coherent thought a while back and it was with scrambled thoughts that I sat back and sucked air into my lungs. Watanuki removed his glasses and laid them carefully aside. Then he placed his head on my chest (when had he opened my shirt and jacket?).

Once I had enough oxygen to both run my brain and spare breath to speak, I said. "No more secrets. No more running. Yuuko made sure of it."

He giggled and snuggled closer. "Yes," he said. "No more secrets ever." And then he opened up a wide vista of what he'd planned to do to me tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.


	2. Chapter 2

"Why do you do that?"

"What?" I asked Kimihiro.

"Why do you keep thinking such disgusting things at me?"

Uh-oh here he goes. He starts swinging his elbows all over the place at me as he hops up and down in a parody of a grand mal epileptic seizure. His mouth hanging open in anger almost began to look like a shark's mouth with pointed teeth. I try to school my thoughts to make him a bit happier.

Kimihiro eyed me out of the corner of his eye. He had such a look on his face.

"Shut up!" he shouts at me.

I just look at him and raise one eyebrow. I believe that he is being

"I am not being unreasonable!"

I just stand up and wrap my arms around his slim frame from behind. His body is so warm from all his exertions.

"But" he started to say.

I close my eyes and concentrate hard. I concentrate on opening my mind to him.

"But you can't!"

I turned him toward me. "Yes" I said to him. "I can." I pulled him in and held him tighter and tighter while he punches me in the chest. Rather ineffectively, I might add.

"I'm not disgusting." I said.

"Wow, Doumeki. That is the longest sentence I've ever heard from you. Are you okay? Do you need to lie down? I can get you a glass of water." Then he started to giggle hysterically while he cried.

"This is just so stupid. We need to go to Yuuko and find out how much it will cost us to get this reversed." Kimihiro told me.

A high voice sounded from around the corner of the room's entrance at the temple. "There are some prices that you cannot pay."

We didn't exactly spring apart like we were guilty. I wouldn't allow that to happen. I tightened my arms around Kimihiro to prevent his escape. We aren't guilty. Of anything.

Yuuko brightened as she saw Kimihiro turn to look at her. "Watanuki!" she cooed. And then she pouted. "I want some _sōsu yakisoba._ And I want more Genshu."

At this I could hear Kimihiro's racing thoughts as we walked from my room to the kitchen. .: _That woman is going to parboil her liver! What is wrong with her? Genshu at 2 o'clock in the afternoon? The alcohol content's too high. The yakisoba should absorb some of it. Maybe I can add some extra starches to her plate to help absorb some of the extra alcohol. If she gets plastered there will be no living with her. What am I going to do with this woman? What am I going to do with… :. _

And then he looked at me. And blushed a most interesting shade of red.

.: _I wish he wasn't wearing that kappogi apron over his school uniform. Then I could see how far that blush really goes. :._ These and other rather lascivious thoughts just barely touched the surface of my mind when I felt this really hard **smack** on the top of my head.

"I told you to STOP DOING THAT!" he shouted in my ears. All I did was obligingly put my fingers in them to block out some of the sound and watch him as he raised the wooden spatula threateningly over my head. Where did he get a spatula from anyway?

"From my kappogi of course. Don't you know anything? A cook must be prepared at all times! He can't rest on his laurels like some lazy oafs that I could name. He must be able to whip up a four course meal on a moment's notice from nothing more than vegetables, a few noodles, and inspiration with the spice rack. You are so lucky that I deign to include you in the portions I make. I, the great Watanuki, will endeavor to satisfy my gluttonous employer to her satisfaction. Aho!"

He pontificated on that theme a long time. When he does that, there is nothing more to do than what I did. Let him talk. I'll give him his comeuppance (pun intended) after dinner.

**Smack! **went the spatula against my head again for my thoughts.

I settled in to watch Kimihiro perform that peculiar magic in the kitchen of the temple.


End file.
